Swiss

At the end of my previous post I said I'd acquired a pile of painted 15mm medieval figures that I was planning on assembling into a couple of DBA armies. Well, I spent this weekend working on one of the armies. Mostly this involved stripping figures from their current bases, a few minor changes to the paint-jobs on some of them, a lot of repairing and replacing of weapons, the addition of flags and, finally, a complete rebasing.

The end result? An Early Swiss DBA army.

Actually it's more than that; a quick check of the DBA lists showed that the first Late Swiss sub-list is very similar and I had the figures to cover the differences. So I did those as well, extending my army's date range by a massive 25 years.

The Early Swiss army offers the chance to have an force made up almost entirely of double-based troops. I found this quite attractive, despite the fact that it's something of a liability not entirely offset by the advantage it offers. So there's nine elements of 6Bd. Including the general. The rest of the army consist of a couple of psiloi with crossbows, and an element of light horse, also with crossbows. That's it. Very one-dimensional.

The Late Swiss list covers the stage when they switched to pikes, but the first sub-list is still basically the 6Bd, with a small core of pike elements. Four to be precise. The army loses the light horse and only fields six of the blade elements.

I did some reading around and the first 'proper' Confederacy consisted of eight cantons. So I gave each of eight elements one of the cantonal flags. The one element without a flag is the committee that commands the army. The flags really set the army off nicely.

I have no illusions about how effective this army is. The other figures I've got should, if I work them right, give me an appropriate Medieval German list to oppose them, but all of their historical opponents are strong on knights; a troop type the Swiss blades are vulnerable to. I suspect that Swiss victories rely on them being the defender and being very cunning in their use of terrain; pretty much how they performed historically, as far as I can tell. Still despite their weakness the army looks great, and I'm thrilled to have finally acquired it at such little effort, and no cost.

Return To The Halls Of Horror

A couple of years ago I posted a Battlesworn scenario in which a group of SAVE envoys had to stop Fu Manchu enacting a dark ritual. It made use of not only of my collection of 1980s Citadel Call of Cthulhu figures, but of the wonderful floorplans GW put out at the time for horror RPGs.

Anyway, last night I played the scenario with Caesar. He took SAVE, whilst I got to be the evil Doctor.

SAVE have to get across the hallway, up the stairs, along the balcony and into Fu Manchu's chamber as quickly as possible. Fu Manchu has an endless army of skeleton minions dedicated to stopping them.

And not just skeletons; Jack the Ripper joined in the fun as well. There was plenty of fighting in the hallway.

Jack the Ripper was slain, but some of SAVE's figures were now wounded as well.

Fu Manchu's forces appear randomly, and most of them seemed to be coming from the archways on either side of the hall. This left the landings relatively free, so those agents of SAVE who got up the stairs found their way relatively unimpeded.

If you look closely, a mummy has joined the fight in the hall.

Time was running out; Fu Manchu enacted the first part of his ritual. Three successes would see him win.

The agents hit a bottleneck; a doorway. Beyond it was Fu Manchu's daughter, who could be used by him to cast spells without a line of sight. Through her he magically paralysed the mighty warrior Ranjit Singh in the doorway, delaying SAVE for a turn.

A SAVE gunman downed the mummy, but was seriously injured himself.

The Baron broke through into the corridor and engaged Fu Manchu's daughter. In normal circumstances this would have been a one-sided fight, since she is a simple, puny familiar, whereas the Baron is a might Brute, but he had been cursed earlier making  him far less effective in combat. She even wounded him.

The Baron got her in the end.

But her sacrifice hadn't been in vain. She bought enough time for Fu Manchu to complete the ritual. Even if SAVE had made the chamber in time, their way was blocked by his bodyguard, Hassan The Silent.

The final positions.

This was the first time I had played the scenario with a live opponent. It was a lot of fun, but we found that the bottlenecks are rather critical. The programmed Fu Manchu I was used to playing against didn't really exploit them, whereas I did, making Caesar's job pretty difficult. I need to rethink that part of the scenario when I play it again. But regardless of the outcome the game was great fun to play.

Geoff and Gary played HOTT, using large numbers of 15mm figures on 60mm frontages. It looked spectacular, especially at 48AP.

Gary's army was made up primarily of Demonworld beastmen, and looked awesome.

Bryan and Ralph played Team Yankee.

Geoff has been decluttering, and was giving away figures, so I now have a pile of 15mm medievals to sift through this weekend with a view to assembling a couple of DBA armies I've been keen to try. Thanks Geoff!

Dwarves vs Uruk Hai

I played a couple more games of Battlesworn this morning, using the solo system from Knights and Knaves to run one of the forces. Both games featured Dwarves and Uruk Hai; I took the Dwarves in the first game and the Uruk Hai in the second.

In the first game there were a few turns where both sides used reaction moves to get their warband into positions where they could charge or intercept enemy movement. And then the fighting started ...

Neither side had any missile troops so the fighting was always going to be up close and personal. The Dwarves did have a Warmage, though, with a summon spell; you can see the resulting armoured bear (a Tank) towards the top of the picture. It proved very useful, since its proximity to two of the Uruk Hai meant that they couldn't charge into the combats happening elsewhere on the board. In Battlesworn you must charge the nearest enemy figure; this forced them to either charge the bear or move somewhere else, and activations weren't always forthcoming.

The fighting was brutal and bloody. The Uruk Hai force was strong on hard-hitting Brutes, whilst the Dwarves fielded resistant Tanks.

The game went to the time limit with neither side having won, and both sides bloodied.

In the second game I took the Uruk Hai. There were very few actions or reactions for the first couple of turns. Eventually a Dwarven musketeer moved to a point where I could charge him.

Once again, this initial combat sucked in figures from boths sides.

The fighting spread across the board, as figures trying to move towards the main part of the fight were intercepted by enemy figures trying to stop them. The preponderance of  red markers shows how deadly the fighting was.

The Uruk Hai had a Berserker, who was brought into the fray to finish off wounded Dwarves. This he did very efficiently, until a combat left him exposed and he was picked off by a musketeer.

Once again the game timed out with no clear winner and lots of rather dead losers.

The warbands in the first game were:

Uruk Hai - 4 x Fighters, 1 x Leader/Brute 4 x Brutes, 1 x Berserker/Brute

Dwarves - 1 x Brute/Tank, 4 x Fighters, 4 x Tanks, 1 x Warmage/Tank. In the second game I dropped the Warmage/Tank and added 2 x Shooters.

Brushing Up On Battlesworn

I'm playing Battlesworn on Thursday, so I thought I'd better brush up on the rules before then, since it's an odd game that takes a couple of goes to get your head around.

I set up a simple terrain, with lots of rock outcrops that blocked movement and line of sight. I was worried that they would restrict the game too much, but they actually worked well and made for some interesting tactical choices. I'm aware that most of the are unpainted. They came from the same $5 bag of goodies I got the Derpy Dinosaurs from, and I haven't quite decided what I want to do with them yet.

The first game was an all 3D-print action, with Dwarves fighting the Night Parade of the Yokai. The Yokai moved their stronger characters forward first, and the Dwarves countered them.

In this picture you can see that the giant Oni has already gone. The Tengu was next.

The fight in the centre sucked in more and more figures, but the Japanese demons got the wort of it.

The came back strongly at the end, as many of the Dwarves were quite badly wounded, and were attacked and quickly dispatched by a second wave of demons. But when the turn limit was reached the Yokai had taken more casualties and were close to their warband breakig altogether.

In the second game the Yokai faced the Agents of SAVE. Josephine Carfax (in the far distance there) started things off well for SAVE by seriously wounding the Tengu as it flew across the board. She's a crack-shot with the pistol is Miss Carfax.

She did less well when faced with the giant Oni.

The Baron moved to save her when it charged, and became locked in a fight with the monster that was to last all game.

This was mostly because  the Baron was cursed by the Yokai's witch, so he couldn't hit anything, whilst the Oni was frustrated by the Baron's wounds being healed by Lakshmi Montague, a new addition from the warband, and another character from the days when we played the Chill RPG. In the RPG she was a psychic; in this game I ran her as a Healer. The shotgun-wielding Ranjit Singh, who has featured in other reports, is her bodyguard.

Anyway, this action ended in a draw, with both sides losing roughly the same number of figures. Miss Carfax fell to a Kappa.

In the final game the Dwarves fought some Elves. I ran the Dwarves, with the Elves being run by the solo system. They were quite a deadly warband to face; with six Shooters they quickly got into a good position and proceeded to dominate the battleground with archery. By bidding low for initiative they could avoid being charged by not moving anything, and always winning initiative themselves. A tough opponent, although in a senario-based game such tactics might not work so well.

Anyway, this game ended in a draw, but the Elves probably had the best of it.

As I said, I used the solo system, which you can find in Knights and Knaves, although I used common sense rather than the action priorities for a lot of the decisions. In the first game I played the Yokai, in teh second SAVE and in the third the Dwarves, so I didn't beat it in any of them.

Pirate Attack - Again

I taught Geoff and Ralph the basics of Galleys and Galleons last night, with Ralph running a couple of pirate ships against Geoff's convoy of three merchant vessels.

I had Geoff roll for three terrain pieces - on a 1-2 it would be an island, 3-4 a sandbank and 5-6 shallows. He rolled three islands, which he used to create a cunning diagonal channel allowing his ships to cross the table with their flank covered from the pirates.

Ralph had to steer around the islands, leaving him intercepting the merchant vessels in the final third of their run to safety.

One of Geoff's ships broke formation, and Ralph pursued. Geoff's plan seemed to be to use the lead ship to draw off the pirates, whilst the other two slipped past upwind of them.

Ralph ran aboard the merchant and sent in the swashbucklers.

I managed not to take any photos after that point. Ralph's boarding action almost took the merchant vessel, but at the last minute Geoff managed a storing activation roll which allowed him to cut grapples and escape. Unfortunately the panicked crew then steered the ship off the table outside of the exit point, but doing so conceded fewer points then the ship being sunk or captured.

The other two merchants were harassed by the smaller pirate vessel. One of them was grappled, but escaped before being captured (more great rolling by Geoff), and managed a cheeky final broadside which badly damaged the pirate before escaping. When the pirate tried to board the other merchant vessel things went well initially, but the merchant crew rallied and counter-boarded, capturing the pirate.

With two ships escaped and one of the pirates captured, Geoff won a convincing victory, although the game was closer than it sounds.

We had a good turnout so there were other games on the go as well. as well as a game of Team Yankee (unpictured) there was this big battle DBA game ...

With loads of elephants.

Update: Here are the ship stats we used.

Pirate Galleon (66) - Q3 C3 - Galleon Rig, Swashbucklers, Charismatic, Chasers
Aspiring Pirate (30) - Q4 C2 - Square Rig, Swashbucklers, Derring-Do, Yare, Chasers
Merchant (30) - Q4 C3 - Galleon Rig, Merchant, High Castles, Pilot